Developer CRM Manifesto - Ship24 Developer Community

#api #productivity #saas #tooling

A CRM Built for Developers Looks Like This

For the developer community building shipping, e-commerce, and SaaS tools

The Problem

Most CRMs were designed for sales teams in 2005.

They still look like:

Cluttered interfaces
"Enterprise-ready" features nobody uses
Manual data entry everywhere
No API access to your own data

If you're a developer building a product, why are you using tools that fight you?

What Developers Actually Need

1. API-first
Every feature accessible via REST. No "use the UI or nothing."

2. Custom data models
Not every business is contact-deal-account. Build YOUR schema.

3. AI-native
Agents should handle the ops work: follow-ups, reminders, pipeline updates.

4. No enterprise bloat
Setup in minutes, not weeks. Learn one thing, not fifteen.

The Coherence Philosophy

We built Coherence for exactly this use case:

// Get all contacts
const contacts = await coherence.contacts.list();

// Update pipeline stage
await coherence.contacts.update(id, { 
  stage: 'qualified' 
});

// Set automated follow-up
await coherence.automations.create({
  trigger: 'no_response_7_days',
  action: 'send_sequence',
  sequence: 'follow_up_1'
});

No vendor lock-in. Your data. Your API.

For Founders Building on Ship24

If you're building shipping tracking tools, e-commerce platforms, or any product-focused SaaS, you need a CRM that:

Tracks customer relationships without overhead
Updates automatically as you work
Actually scales with your business

What does your current customer tracking look like?

Would love to hear what tools developers are using for customer relationships. Comment below.

developers #indiehackers #saas #api #bootstrapped

DEV Community